Selectors plot Ohuruogu's return with 400m time trial

Monday 30 July 2007 21.34 EDT
First published on Monday 30 July 2007 21.34 EDT

Christine Ohuruogu has been given an unexpected chance to make Britain's team for next month's world championships in a specially arranged time-trial. Organised on the request of national selectors, it will be held on Thursday morning at Crystal Palace in London.

Ohuruogu, 23, the Commonwealth Games 400m champion, has spent the past year serving a suspension after she missed three drugs tests. Her ban runs out next Monday but 24 hours later Britain will confirm their squad for Japan.

The London athlete has been earmarked for a place in the relay - and possibly even the 400m - if she can prove that her fitness has not been affected during the past 12 months of inaction.

John Trower, UK Athletics' senior performance manager for sprints and hurdles, and Todd Bennett, a senior performance coach for relays, notablythe women's 4x400m, will be present to watch Ohuruogu go through her paces.

Officially she cannot run until next Tuesday and the only opportunity she could have would be the Stockholm grand prix that night. But UK Athletics is determined to give her a chance before then.

She is based at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre at Pickett's Lock but the plan is that her time-trial - probably against two or three other runners - will take place at Crystal Palace, the day before the Norwich Union London grand prix.

Coincidentally, her last race was in the London grand prix 12 months ago when she was seventh, and her career subsequently plummeted. On the eve of the European championships in Gothenburg, a few weeks later, it was revealed that she had failed to be available for three drugs test, which counts as a doping offence.

Despite protesting her innocence, she was banned for a year. She took her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and even though it admitted she had probably done nothing more than made a mistake it upheld the UK Athletics ban.